You're My Only Hope
by cherry-sodas
Summary: It was July 27, 1977, and Dallas Winston had seen 'Star Wars' seven times. [AU. Part of my 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe. Contains spoilers for 'Impatience and Impulsivity' but can be read non-linearly.]


**This is a saccharine piece that, like everything, takes place in the 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe. It's a second-gen story in that universe, so it contains redemption-arc and baby spoilers from 'Impatience and Impulsivity.' So, if you're wondering why Dally is just … like this … that's what 'Impatience and Impulsivity' covers in pretty vivid detail.**

* * *

It was July 27, 1977, and Dallas Winston had seen _Star Wars _seven times.

* * *

It all started in May when Lucy told him she was going to take Elenore to the movies over the holiday weekend. It was hot, and that year, New York had decided to transition into summer as quickly as possible. They had lived there since Lucy graduated from college and decided, to the surprise of none, to go to graduate school at NYU ("They're so _progressive, _Dal," she'd told him on their way to the city that had once ousted him. "They've been letting women get their doctorates since 1892."). Lucy figured she would take Elenore to a movie so she could cool down inside. It was a long one, she'd heard, and people really seemed to like it already. She'd asked her husband if he wanted to go, and at the time, it was all too easy to decline.

"You said somethin' about a spaceship?" he asked.

"Yeah, the whole thing's in space," Lucy said. "Like that other movie Pony and I made you come see with us after Elenore turned one. You remember." For someone who was months away from defending a dissertation on women's death and defiance in Victorian fiction, Lucy was still terrible at remembering her titles. It was a wonder she had passed her preliminary exams.

"Was that the year you said, 'Open the pod bay doors, Dal' every time we got into a car?"

"Yeah."

"That was fuckin' terrible."

Lucy had to laugh. She knew she couldn't get her husband to go see another space movie (It was hard enough getting him to pay attention to any movie at all, though he'd come around a little.), but it was always worth it to invite him.

"Elenore!" she shouted toward the back of the apartment. "Come on. We're going to the movies."

Seconds later, Elenore emerged from her bedroom. Tall for her age with long, dark hair, brilliant blue eyes, and scabby knees, she looked exactly the way Lucy had pictured her when the doctor cried out, "It's a girl!" ten years earlier. Sadie always said that Elenore may look like her mother, but she laughed like her father, which would make all the difference. If she had to judge by all the cuts and bruises she'd tended to since Elenore started school and all the parent-teacher conferences where the teacher always said the same thing ("Elenore's very bright, but we have to get her to stop punching the boys in her class to prove it."), Lucy could see what Sadie meant.

"What are we seeing?" she asked.

"That _Star Wars _thing," Lucy said. "You might be grown up on the inside, but you are not old enough to see _The Other Side of Midnight_."

"I don't even know what that is," Elenore said. She eyed her father, who clearly wasn't on his way out the door with his girls this time. Her eyes flickered back to Lucy.

"Daddy's not coming with us?"

Dally shook his head.

"It's good for you to have some time with your mom," he said.

Elenore shrugged. That was fair. She spent a lot of time with her dad while her mom was finishing her dissertation. Before Elenore was born, he had still been working at the Slash J. But when he learned that the only thing keeping him out of Vietnam was sticking around and acting like a dad, the first thing he had to do was find a second job. He wasn't itching to be a father when he found out Lucy was knocked up; that much was certain. He wasn't itching to let go of Lucy, either, and keeping hold of Lucy meant figuring out a way that she could stay in school—figuring out a way to be a father. She married him two days after his eighteenth birthday on a dare, and this was how he handled it? Knocking her up? He was sure he'd never forgive himself for screwing himself over (and Lucy, too, he supposed) like that.

He wasn't crazy about having a kid the whole time Lucy was pregnant. Everyone knew it, even Lucy. Especially Lucy. He thought about the things he'd have to give up and scribbled a goodbye note to Lucy each morning. She was smart. She'd understand. Every morning, he'd wake up, watch Lucy get pissed at some thing or another, change his mind, and throw the note in the garbage. Lucy was the first person to see him as a _person. _She was the first girl who understood that his reputation preceded _him_. She was the first girl who could keep up with him—the first girl who wasn't afraid of him, and he knew he was the first guy who wasn't afraid of her, too. Every morning, he'd decide to stick out just one more morning if it meant he got to stay with her, the only person who _got _him—all the way _got _him.

When Lucy passed Elenore to him in the hospital on the evening she was born (And he wouldn't have even gone into that room if Sodapop Curtis hadn't caught him trying to split at the last minute.), he figured one more night wouldn't hurt. Anyone who looked that much like him and Lucy put together had to be worth getting to know. He'd stick around for a little while and see if that hunch was true. After a week of downtime with Lucy and the baby, he'd started looking for "responsible" jobs that a guy who had been in and out of jail could get. For a short while in Tulsa, he'd swung it as a bagboy; when Lucy graduated and moved him back to New York City, he'd landed a gig as a bartender, which paid pretty well. They obviously weren't well off (not even close, especially not in New York on a bartender's wages and a graduate student's living stipend), but they took care of Elenore.

"We'll tell Daddy about the movie when we get home," Lucy said. She patted Elenore on the shoulder and looked her husband in the eye as if to ask him if he was sure he wanted to disappoint their daughter like this.

"She can tell me about it when she gets home," he said. "I'll listen."

Lucy rolled her eyes, more playful than vitriolic, and she and Elenore headed down the block. It was the last peaceful moment the family would ever share. It was the last moment before Elenore _changed_.

* * *

"Slow down, will ya?" Dally begged Elenore, who was running around the living room, more excited than she'd ever been. Since she'd learned to walk, Dally always thought Elenore reminded him of himself. She always had this cool toughness about her. But this… this jumping around, this shouting, this giggling… that had to have come from Lucy. He thought back to the way Lucy ran and jumped around her folks' place when she opened her acceptance letter to NYU years earlier. Elenore was only three at the time, but she must have remembered it vividly, since her post-_Star Wars _fever was a perfect imitation of her mother.

"Daddy, there were spaceships, and people flew in them! And when Darth Vader…"

"What the hell kinda name is that?"

"He's the bad guy. There was a kid in the theater who cried when he first walked in. I laughed at him. I would have laughed harder, but _Mother_ told me that was 'rude.'"

Quietly, Dally had to laugh at that one, too.

"We've talked about this," Lucy said. "You can make fun of people in private with your father and me, but you can't laugh at people in public unless you want to start a brawl."

"How do you know I _don't _want to start a brawl?"

Lucy sighed, exhausted. By the time she was ten, she'd learned how to curb her violent impulses. Why hadn't Elenore? She looked over at her husband, who was whispering something to Elenore, and she laughed. That was when Lucy remembered there were twenty-three little reasons why Elenore was always going to be a little tougher than the other kids.

"Tell your father who you really liked in the movie," Lucy said. At this point, it was easier to surrender.

Elenore let out a small gasp and clapped her tiny hands together.

"Princess Leia."

Dally looked beyond Elenore and at Lucy with pleading, confused eyes.

"I thought she wasn't allowed to watch princesses unless you said."

That much was true. Everyone back at home thought Lucy was crazy and that there was nothing wrong with letting a girl watch a fun little princes movie for a Saturday matinee, but Lucy wanted to make sure that her daughter could learn a thing or two from the girls in books and movies. Cinderella was all right. She married the prince, but it wasn't her _raison-d'être _or anything ("Raisin what?" Dally had asked.), and she was hardworking. Snow White was off limits, especially when Lucy remembered the end where a stranger kisses an unconscious woman in the woods. Sleeping Beauty would be fine if the whole movie was about the fairies. But Princess Leia was different. That was a princess Lucy Bennet could root for.

"Let her speak," Lucy said. "Tell your dad about how Princess Leia saved the boys."

"Oh, it was so cool!" Elenore said. "So, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo came to save Princess Leia, but when the bad guys were shooting at them, Princess Leia grabbed a gun and blew a hole right into the garbage chute!"

"The garbage chute?" He hated every word she was saying in front of him.

"Yeah! They needed to run away, and that was the only way out. And… Mom, tell him what she said when she shot at the garbage chute. Tell him, Mom."

"I think you wanna tell him," Lucy said. "You practiced the whole way home."

Elenore's face lit up, and Dally couldn't believe she existed—that he was sitting here with her. If someone had told him when he was seventeen that he'd make it long enough to have any baby, let alone a baby who knew him and called him _Dad, _he would have kicked their asses out of the room. But there she was. There she was, and she was so like her mother.

"She said, 'Somebody has to save our skins!'" Elenore said. "And it was so cool. She wore a white dress, and her hair … Mom, tell Daddy what you said her hair looked like."

"You tell him," Lucy said. "It's your story."

"Mom said her hair looked like two big cinnamon rolls!"

"Huh?" Dally asked.

He looked past Elenore and at his wife one more time.

"What kind of space movie did you take her to see? Princesses and cinnamon rolls? Where's the machine that kills people?"

Lucy shrugged. She remembered the first time she was taken by something the way Elenore seemed to have been taken by the _Star Wars _movie. She was four, and her father read to her from _Sense and Sensibility _every night before she went to sleep. She was obsessed with the Dashwood sisters—what they might have been wearing, what kind of tea they might have been drinking, and how funny they could be. Seeing that look on Elenore's face when she looked up at Princess Leia reminded her so much of those nights with _Sense and Sensibility_. It made Lucy feel certain that everything was all right.

"Ask your dad," Lucy said. "Quick, while he's still listening."

"I'm always listenin'," Dally muttered, even though it wasn't always true.

"I want you to go to the movie with me," Elenore said.

Dally looked at Lucy again, his eyes pleading with her to take his side. He'd never liked to sit through a movie. He had to be able to get up and walk around. He had to be able to bail whenever he wanted. There were very few things he could make him stay put, and none of them were space princesses and garbage chutes. He just couldn't focus on something like that for too long, no matter how much Lucy begged him to. It wasn't that he didn't care about Elenore. Against his younger and less vulnerable judgment, he did. It was that she and Lucy had been out of the house for twice as long as they would have been at any other movie, and he really didn't want to sit through another long movie about a stupid spaceship.

"She's trying to share her life with you," Lucy said. "You want her to share her life with you, don't you? Isn't that why you're still here?"

Elenore pouted at her father, and he sighed. She beamed. At ten years old, she knew he always sighed before he relented, but at ten years old, she had no idea that he had once been impossible to move.

"All right," he said. "But we're gonna go see it my way."

And so, the next seven times Elenore Winston saw _Star Wars_, she and her father had snuck past the ticket takers and dodged the ushers. In the long lines and all the commotion, it was all too easy. Dally told Elenore not to tell Lucy they were sneaking in, but something told him she already knew.

Of course Lucy knew they were sneaking in. She remembered how he used to crawl through the tear in the fence at the Dingo, and she knew you couldn't rid an old dog of all his old tricks. It didn't matter to her—not too much, anyway.

* * *

On their way home from their seventh screening of (stupid) _Star Wars_, Elenore was trying to figure out who, in her life, reminded her of the characters in the movie. Dally listened, telling her no when she was flat wrong. Two-Bit wasn't nerdy enough to be that gold robot (his least favorite part about the movie). They agreed that Pony was Luke Skywalker, but when Elenore tried to say that Johnny was Chewbacca, Dally had to cut in.

"Johnny's awful small to be that guy," Dally said. "And he's no walking carpet."

"It's not that," Elenore said. "You always talk about how brave he was when you were growing up together. And he's a good friend, like Chewie."

"Huh. You know, you might have a point, kid. Hey, who's Princess Leia?"

"Mom."

Dally nodded. He couldn't argue with that one. With her indignant eye rolls, pretty face, and take-charge attitude, Lucy Bennet was like Princess Leia without the stupid spaceship.

"You're right," he said. "So's that make me Han Solo?"

Elenore wrinkled her tiny nose in confusion.

"Han Solo?" she asked. "Why would you be Han Solo?"

"Well, you know. Han used to be a bad guy, but after he starts hanging around Princess Leia, he turns out OK. Doesn't that kinda remind you a little bit of me?"

Elenore shook her head. She didn't know much about the way her father grew up. She didn't know that when he was her age, he was arrested for the first time. She didn't know much about her father from before he figured out he loved her mother, as Lucy thought she was too young to really understand. When Elenore looked at her father, she didn't see Dallas Winston, the guy who rolled drunk guys in the park for kicks and stole their rings once they were down on the ground. She didn't know that guy. That guy was still around when she was very small, but she never really knew him. When Elenore looked at her father, she just saw Daddy, the guy who snuck her in to see _Star Wars _seven times that summer. To Elenore, Dally was no roguish Han Solo. Not at all.

"I don't know," she said. "I always thought of you as like Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Dally raised his eyebrows in surprise. If anyone reminded him of Obi-Wan Kenobi, it was Darry. They were both responsible, but they knew how to fight when they needed to. After seeing the movie for the seventh time, Dally could see that Old Ben Kenobi got a little tired of Luke Skywalker's whining, same as Darry felt about Ponyboy when Ponyboy was a kid. But Old Ben kept his cool and helped Luke out, anyway. How could Elenore see him as Old Ben when Old Ben could keep it together like that, and he never could? He'd shaped up a bit since she was born, but he was never going to be some Boy Scout. What was Elenore thinking?

He asked her, and she explained as they ambled toward their building.

"Well, you know," she said. "If I need your help, you're there. Like when I got in trouble for socking that kid in the ribs after he said girls couldn't be good at science. When the principal made me call you, I knew you'd be there to help me out. I knew you'd be on my side and that you'd get why I socked him."

"I did help you out that day, didn't I? Funny how an old hood just has to look at a school principal funny, and his kid gets her way."

"Oh, that's another reason you're Obi-Wan," Elenore said. "You always call yourself a hood, and Obi-Wan wears a lot of hoods. I forgot about that one till you just said it."

Dally laughed—the laugh Elenore could mimic so well—as he held the door open for her, and they made their way up to their apartment.

"Sure, kid," he said. "That's what that means."

He'd seen _Star Wars _seven times, and he still though everything in it was lame (What the hell was a Jedi Knight?). But he did love how excited Elenore looked every time the title flashed up on the movie screen. Every time, it was like she was seeing it for the first time. Every time, he was glad he'd made it long enough to know her.

"Help me, Daddy-Wan Kenobi," Elenore said, a little more to herself than to her father. "You're my only hope."

At the time, she didn't think Dally was listening.

* * *

It was June 6, 1980, and Dallas Winston had seen _The Empire Strikes Back _four times.

Though he'd never admit it in public (or even to Elenore), he liked this one a little bit, except for that little green guy in the swamp. That guy reminded him of his parole officer back in Tulsa. But he liked the rest of it just fine (not like he'd ever let on, of course). He liked the way Han Solo and Princess Leia messed with each other. It reminded him of when he and Lucy first discovered the other wasn't so bad. He liked when Luke found out his enemy was his old man. He never would have said it out loud, but hearing that was almost familiar … almost satisfying.

"You don't think that could be true, could you?" Elenore asked. "Luke's so good, and Vader's so… well, he's bad. How could someone so good come from someone so bad?"

"Sometimes it happens that way," Dally said, hoping she'd drop it.

"Like when?"

He sighed. Elenore was thirteen now—going into eighth grade and had been wearing lip-gloss since her birthday in April. She was old enough to know a little bit about what her father had been like the first time he had lived in New York; what he was like back in Tulsa, too. But he and Lucy never said a word. Elenore _loved_ her father, and he wasn't exactly thrilled when he imagined how she might react if she found out what he was like before she came around. As far as Elenore really knew, Dallas Winston was nothing more than Daddy, who picked her up a packet of gummy bears every time she got higher than a _D _in math (her worst subject, so much like her mother). He never told her he was the one leaving the packets of gummy bears on her bed, but he didn't need to. The silence spoke for itself. Dally ushered Elenore inside.

"My old man wasn't so great," Dally said, almost impressed with how well he'd mastered the understatement since Elenore came along. "Didn't really give a damn what happened to me or if he went … weeks, months, sometimes years without seein' me. You probably didn't even realize I had a dad."

"You obviously had a dad at some point," Elenore said. "I'm thirteen. I know how we get people."

"Yeah, I guess so. But, hey, look at yourself. You're a good kid …"

"My English teacher would call that _biased_," she said. "I'm a part of you, so you can't look at me like you'd look at just anybody."

If only she knew. It was true that on the night she was born, he was planning on running away without a word. It was true that he would have gotten away with it if Sodapop hadn't pulled him back into the hospital. But it wasn't Soda that made him stay that first night. It was that when Lucy passed Elenore over to him, he looked at her and saw himself. The sliver of his sympathy that was still there started to grow a little bit when he recognized her as his own. He didn't ask to be abandoned, and neither did this kid, this baby—_his _kid, _his _baby. That small part of him wished, however silently, that someone had stayed for him. One night with this baby (_his _baby) wouldn't kill him, probably. Then one more night. Then one more night. More nights passed, and he realized he didn't have to convince himself to get through them anymore. After a while, he kind of liked the kid.

"Guess you're right," he said. "But you're a good kid. And I…"

Elenore looked up at him, not quite incredulous, but not quite knowing, either. He exhaled, a little frustrated.

"You're a better kid than most of the kids I knew," he said. There were those understatements again. "People always have somethin' good to say about you, even when you're goin' around punching boys on the playground."

"I haven't done that since the second grade. Mom taught me how to hurt them with my words. It's less fun since I don't think they understand what I'm saying, but at least I don't get sent to the principal's office for it."

"Your mom's smart for teachin' you how," Dally said, almost smiling at the image of Lucy beating the life out of a kid in her school when she was thirteen. Elenore certainly didn't know about that. "Nobody ever taught me that. I was a bad kid …"

He had to laugh before he finished. He knew he had gotten good at understatements, but that was the understatement of the twentieth century.

"I was a bad kid," he repeated. "But you're a good kid. So, naw, I don't think that guy's lyin' when he says he's Luke's father. Happens everyday."

They walked upstairs and back to the apartment, the same one they'd lived in since moving to the city when Elenore was turning four. As Dally unlocked the door, Elenore stared straight ahead and said (again, more to herself than to her father), "I'm still gonna call you 'Daddy-Wan Kenobi.'"

_Go for it, kid_, he thought, although he'd have to keep it close to the vest, of course. _I kinda like it_.

That night after the fourth time they'd seen _The Empire Strikes Back_, Lucy smiled at her husband from behind one of her books, admiring him in the way he never thought he'd be admired.

"Thanks for taking her to see that movie again even though I know you hated it," Lucy said. "And thank you for paying this time. One of my summer students is an usher down at that theater you go to, and he's been giving me strange looks in class, like he knows what you're up to."

"Elenore doesn't want to sneak in anymore," Dally said. "I think she finally caught on to me. She's a good kid."

"She is. But she's got a pretty good dad. I love you."

He walked over to her, tipped her book down to her lap, and looked her in the eye. He couldn't remember the last time she'd actually told him that (though he certainly remembered the first time). At least now he knew what to say.

"I know."

* * *

It was May 26, 1983, and Dallas Winston had only seen _Return of the Jedi _one time.

In truth, he didn't know if he could go again, though he knew Elenore would be expecting it. Elenore said it was OK. She'd go with Mom and maybe with Pony when he came to visit in a few weeks. She was excited to talk to him about the newest movie since she'd finally read _Hamlet _in school this year, and she knew now what he meant by "_Star Wars _is just like _Hamlet _in outer space." Dally hadn't known what that meant, exactly, until Lucy explained it to him.

Then, of course, it made sense. It made sense why he'd felt so angry in that theater, when that whiny little towheaded kid held his dying father's body, scared out of his mind, and said, "I can't leave you. I've got to save you."

It made sense why he'd almost gotten up and walked out after the dying father whispered back, "You already have."

He was thirty-five now, and he couldn't even hardly remember what the old man looked like. At least, he couldn't remember it very well anymore. In his nightmares, he looked a lot like stupid Darth Vader without the helmet. Sickly. Wheezing. Old. Everything Dally wanted to avoid after he got used to having Elenore around. After everything the old man did, Dally was convinced that was what he really looked like now, if he was even still alive.

But of course he was still alive. People like that always live into bitter old age. That was Lucy's theory, anyhow, and the more she explained it to him, the more he agreed. People like that never get into anything that could get them killed. His father was self-destructive but only from the inside out. People like him, Lucy always said, sit in their broken-down chairs with all the shades drawn, smoking and drinking and getting angry at the fear-mongers on the radio for no good reason. Of course the old man was still alive, but if Dally ever found him, it wouldn't turn out a thing like that movie.

He didn't know why seeing Elenore's stupid space movie got him thinking about the old man. Almost nothing did anymore—nothing except for _Star Wars_. Stupid _Star Wars_, which, in another life, he never would have gone anywhere near. Lucy muttered something about closure when they got into bed that night. Maybe he could use the stupid space movie as his closure. He didn't say anything, but he thought she might be right. Lucy. She was so smart. What had he done to marry someone so smart?

"Lucy?"

"Hmm?"

"You ever about think if you married somebody smarter than me?"

"There aren't too many people smarter than you."

"I never finished high school."

"Doesn't matter. You're smarter than half the people in my department. You know how I know?"

"Hmm?"

"None of them would have put two and two together about their screwed-up relationships with their dads after seeing the last _Star Wars _movie. They can't even do it after reading _Oedipus Rex_. Always going on and on about _the text_. Never understanding thatour bodies are texts, too."

_Oedipus Rex, _he knew (Lucy specialized in that psychoanalytical stuff, and Oedipus was a big deal around those parts. It drove her nuts how much they worshipped the guy), so he had a little laugh. She rolled over onto her other side and draped her arm across his chest.

"She didn't call you 'Daddy-Wan Kenobi' today," Lucy said.

"She's sixteen."

"That's true. I think she was thinking about it, though."

"Me too. Don't tell her, but I kind of like being 'Daddy-Wan Kenobi.' Heh!"

"She knows you like it. That's why she says it."

"Mmm."

Elenore knew all about how her father had grown up now that she was sixteen and about the age he was when he made some of his worst choices (There were those understatements again.). To Dally's surprise, none of it really seemed to bother her. She didn't look at him differently after that. The next day, she asked him to help her with the button on the back of her dress before school, just like she would have any other day. He liked that she still trusted him after finding out about the things he'd done when he was her age, but he still didn't dare show it on his face. He was glad to know that Elenore knew she didn't have to save him. If she felt that way, she probably wouldn't have asked him to button her dress. She knew it was a given he would say yes.

* * *

It was November 25, 1998, and Elenore Winston had purchased a ticket for _Meet Joe Black_ just to see the new _Star Wars _movie trailer.

She asked her parents if they wanted to go, but her mother was busy getting ready for Thanksgiving. Her father refused to buy a ticket for anything that had Brad Pitt in it (on personal principle), and he was getting too old to just sneak into the movie theater now. He'd stay home and watch Veronica, who was turning four in February.

Veronica was born when Elenore was finishing up law school. She'd decided to become a lawyer after she heard about all the hell the cops tried to put her uncles through when they were kids. She was paying it off in loans bigger than she cared to admit, and now, she had Veronica. Of course, she didn't regret that she had Veronica, but it would have been a lot easier if Veronica's father weren't married to someone else. Lucy and Dally had no idea who Veronica's father was. They thought if Elenore didn't want to tell them, then they must not need to know. When Veronica was born, Elenore was relieved to discover that she had her scowl—the scowl Elenore had inherited from her father. That way, she felt even better about writing _Winston _on Veronica's birth certificate. In part, Elenore went to see the movie trailer because she was a die-hard _Star Wars _fan, but mostly, she went to see it because she couldn't figure out if Veronica was old enough to watch the movies yet.

Elenore left the movie theater as soon as the trailer was over. She was so disappointed by what she saw that she couldn't rightly sit through a whole movie after that. Besides, she also tried to avoid anything that had Brad Pitt in it (on her father's personal principle). When she came through her parents' front door, Veronica leapt from her grandmother's lap and into Elenore's arms.

"Mommy!" she said. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too," Elenore said and scooped Veronica up off the ground. "That's why I came home. That, and there was something that looked like Gonzo with wings in the preview for the new _Star Wars_."

"Gonzo?" Lucy asked. "Like the Muppet?"

"Yeah. It was awful. And who wants to see Darth Vader when he was a little kid? What's next? Boba Fett as a little kid? I'm telling you, Mom. I'm starting to think _Star Wars _is losing its cool."

"_Star Wars _was never cool," Dally said from the couch. "You just liked it."

"But you always went to see the movies with me."

"Not 'cause I liked 'em."

Veronica tapped right on her mother's collarbone, and Elenore tried not to wince in pain.

"Mommy?" she asked. "Is _Star Wars _the one with the princess?"

"It used to be," Elenore sighed. "Now, they've got a kiddie version of Darth Vader and a flying blue Gonzo. When I was just a little older than you are, Grandpa used to take me to see the old movies. _I_ thought we had a good time, but apparently, _Grandpa_ didn't like 'em too much."

Veronica signaled to Elenore to let her down. As soon as she did, Elenore ran into her grandfather on the couch. Lucy held back a giggle when she heard him go, "Oof!" as the three-year-old collapsed into his chest, taking him by surprise. How was this the same boy from her teen years—the one she'd married out of impatience and impulsivity? She thought about how he was with Johnny, even then, and it didn't seem like much of a stretch.

"You didn't like Mommy's movies?" Veronica asked. She pouted up at him. At three years old, she already knew how to get what she wanted out of him. Now that he was over fifty, he was (regrettably, yes, regrettably) getting softer. _Softer_, he'd point out whenever Lucy teased him about it. Not soft. He could never be a soft guy. He didn't have what it took.

"Ain't about the movies, Bug. If it was, ya wouldn't have just watched _Thumbelina _for the hundredth time," he said through gritted teeth.

He stopped, but only after Lucy glared at him.

"Oh," Veronica said. "If you wanna watch something else, we can."

Lucy rushed to the other side of Veronica on the couch, trying to save her husband from a path he didn't want to go down. She grabbed Veronica into her arms and rocked her back and forth just a little bit, like she used to do for Elenore when she wasn't feeling right.

"Grandpa likes whatever you like," Lucy said, cautiously eyeing her husband as she spoke. "He likes it as long as it means he gets to sit with you. You wanna come back here and look at Grandma's big Disney book before you have to go?"

"Yeah."

Lucy lifted Veronica from the couch and carried her back to Elenore's old room, which was now filled with all the books Lucy couldn't fit in the living room or in her bedroom. They'd been together for over thirty years (which still shocked the hell out of their friends), and Dally had made it through more of his wife's books than he let on. He liked _Go Ask Alice _and _On the Road_, but his favorite book was the first one Lucy ever wrote, the one about death and defiance in Victorian women's novels. He'd memorized that little tagline about what she was working on from the days when it was just her dissertation. She sure did say it enough. To this day, he'd never exactly told Lucy that he'd read the whole book, plus the most important novels she wrote about in it—_Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, _and _Wuthering Heights_. _Jane Eyre _was all right (a little close to home, especially at the start), and he even liked _Wuthering Heights _a little bit. It was the right kind of creepy. He couldn't stand _The Mill on the Floss_. It was about a thousand pages long, and it gave him the creeps that a brother and a sister could love each other as much as Tom and Maggie … whatever their last name was. It didn't matter. The whole book gave him the creeps, and he respected the hell out of his wife for having read and written about the whole damn thing. He could tell her he'd read so much of what she studied, but he never did. That wasn't how he played it. Though after thirty-three years of conversations, he figured she must be at least a little bit onto him.

Elenore took her daughter's place on the couch. She smiled, but there was something different in her smile than usual. She was tired. It made Dally want to stomp anyone who might have made her feel that way. It made him angry that he knew he couldn't. All her life, he'd done something about it when she was hurt. Once, when the girls in Elenore's eighth-grade class wouldn't invite her to a party, Dally swore he'd go beat the hell out of their fathers for raising girls who would do a thing like that to his kid, almost like he'd forgotten he'd done _far _worse things to other kids when he was young. He would have gone and beat up the other folks, too, if Lucy hadn't guarded the door with her whole body and begged him to stay put. Nobody wanted to visit their husband in jail if they could help it, she said, and though Dally could have easily picked her up and moved her to the side, he never did. After all these years, Lucy Bennet was the only person who could convince him not to fight because she was the only person who wasn't scared of him. If she asked him not to, he'd listen. He'd grumble about it for a little while afterward, but he'd listen.

Her father's proclivity for violence was the biggest reason Elenore never told him who Veronica's father was. She was quite sure that if he knew, he'd find the guy and beat him to a pulp, if not worse. It was better to keep him in the dark than for Veronica to grow up without him.

"Movie comes out in May," Elenore said.

"They always come out in May," Dally said. "I remember that from when you were a kid."

"Veronica will be four by then. And if the new movie is anything like _Return of the Jedi…_"

"The one with the ugly teddy bears? I can't believe you made me sit through that garbage."

"Well, if it's anything like that, I'm thinking I'll take Veronica to see it. So, what do you say, Daddy-Wan Kenobi? You wanna go with us?"

Dally smiled, more to himself than at Elenore. _Daddy-Wan Kenobi_. Now, that was a name he hadn't heard in a long time… a long, long time.

* * *

It was November 6, 2014, and Elenore Winston had read about the new _Star Wars _movie.

_The Force Awakens_ was such an appropriate title—for the series and for her. Veronica had been in college for over a year, and though the whole family still lived in the city, it became harder and harder to see everyone. Work was becoming dull. Elenore felt like she had been on autopilot for over a year, mindlessly reviewing the same words and writing different versions of the same documents. But _The Force Awakens_? That was something she could look forward to. That was something that could make her feel less sluggish.

She pulled her phone out of her purse at lunch that day and dialed her father's number. Last Christmas, she and her mother conspired to buy him a phone, which he was unhappy about since he didn't trust anything that didn't have wires.

"There _are _wires, Dad," Elenore tried to explain. "They're in the phone."

"Doesn't matter if I can't see 'em."

He took the phone and used it sometimes—mostly during work hours, when he thought one of his girls might need him to come by and give somebody a piece of his mind (or his fists—he was old now, but he could still stomp anybody who needed it). It was noon, so Elenore figured he'd be on call for her. A smile crept across her face. It felt like the same smile she had when she told her father about Princess Leia for the first time when she was ten years old.

"Elenore?" that familiar gravelly voice asked.

"Hi."

"You need me to come down there?"

"No, I'm fine. Just at lunch."

"Well, then, why're ya callin' me?"

"Read a news article earlier today. Thought you might be interested."

"Doubt it. What it say?"

She could have told him that the new _Star Wars _movie was coming out next year, and she hoped he'd see it with her, even though she knew he didn't like it. She could have told him the name of it. There were a lot of things Elenore could have said, but there was really only one that could tell him how she felt—how thankful she was that he, the roughest, toughest guy in the East and in the West, sat through every silly _Star Wars _movie with her … how thankful she was that he had stuck around and been not just her father, but her _dad_.

"Help me, Daddy-Wan Kenobi," she said. "You're my only hope."

* * *

**So this story … it sure does exist. I don't know what made me write it apart from my deep, unabiding love for **_**Star Wars**_** and the fact that Elenore would have been about the perfect age for the first film when it came out in '77. I wasn't going to post it until 'Impatience and Impulsivity' was finished, as Lucy only just learned that she's pregnant, and Dally is still in the midst of a redemption arc. But then the title and first teaser for **_**The Rise of Skywalker **_**came out today, and I couldn't resist. So, yes, there is an explanation for why Dally is just … like this now. There are much longer, more intricate narratives explaining the character he becomes in my universe, but those are in 'Impatience and Impulsivity.' **

**Also, **_**The Other Side of Midnight **_**(the movie Lucy mentions that Elenore is not allowed to see) is the movie that was released at the same time as **_**Star Wars **_**(now **_**A New Hope**_**). The studios thought that would be the hit of the summer, and that's all I have to say about that.**

**Hinton owns **_**The Outsiders**_**. Disney owns **_**Star Wars**_** and the Muppets, too, while we're at it. I own a set of twelve pairs of really cool **_**Star Wars **_**socks. This story, and everything I write, is dedicated to the guy who bought them for me.**


End file.
